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Why it was so hard to find the voice of Martian Manhunter, according to longtime Justice League voice actor Carl Lumbly
Carl Lumbly reveals how he developed J’onn J’onzz’s voice in Justice League
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Carl Lumbly has been a voice actor for numerous projects, but Justice League is by far his favorite one. However, he also found it to be one of the more challenging ones.
Lumbly voiced J’onn J’onzz, a refugee from Mars who fought alongside the Justice League as the Martian Manhunter. This forced Lumbly to get creative, since nobody has any idea what a Martian is supposed to sound like.
“Martian Manhunter in Justice League was a Martian. There was no template,” Lumbly says during a panel at Tampa Bay Comic Convention. “There was no place to go research Martian dialect. So, it had to do more with his story for me, and his story was here was someone who had no one to talk to, who came to a planet where he knew no one, but he got attached to this idea of human beings who had all these faults and were trying to help one another.”
Lumbly gave a lot of thought to how J’onn related to the human race, which helped him find the character’s voice. “[Humans] were kind of, not top-level beings. They didn’t have telepathy. They couldn’t discorporate, move through walls, so in terms of skills they were of rudimentary, but they were kind of good hearted, and here was someone to talk to. So, I felt that he found his voice on Earth by talking to humans, and it became a more human voice. And that made a difference for him. That’s the most fun I’ve ever had doing a voice.”
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